Humour.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 39, 22 December 1894, Page 16

Humour.

LOYE’S SUBTERFUGE. I was sitting out in the front of the tavern in the West Virginia mountain town where I made my head-quarters one summer, when a lank mountaineer, about twenty years old, rode up on a mule and greeted me by name, although I could ::ot exactly place him. He dismounted, and coming to where I was, he sat down quite close to me. “ Colonel,” he said, in a low, cautious tone , “you kin respeck a man’s feelings, cain’t yer ? ” “ I think I can, if I know what they are,” I answered, slightly uncertain as to what he expected of me. “Well, I’m in this sort of a fix,” he proceeded, very confidentially, after giving a hitch to the box he was sitting on. “ I’ve been goin’ ter see old man Mullins’s gal Susan, an’ she’s tuck to me like a wet kitten to a hot brick, but she kinder hankers after money.” “ Most women do,” I ventured. “ I reckon yer rnore’n half right,” he admitted, with a sigh. “ Anyhow, Susan toT me to-day I wuz too pore, an’ when I disputed the p’int, she said ez how I didn’t have a cent termy name, an’ when I toT her she didn’t know what she was talkin’ about, she up an’ said, she did, that if I could show her seven dollars she’d nab me in two shakes uv a lamb’s tail. Then I said, I did, ez how I’d have to go home after hit, an’ I came to you. You gi’ me the money, an’ hoi’ that mule fer hit tell I git back yer agin, won’t yer ? ” The proposition seemed fair enough, for the young man was honest amd very earnest, so I held the mule, and he went away on foot, holding the seven dollars. While he was gone I got to thinking, and when he came back, I lay for him. “ Did you get her P ” I asked, as I returned the seven dollars to my pocket. “In course I did,” he replied, triumphantly, “ fer Susan’s a gal uv her -word.” “By the way,“ I asked, as he mounted the mule,“ why did you come to me for the money ? The mule was worth a good deal more than seven dollars. Vhy didn’t you call the young lady’s attention to that P ” He winked slyly as he dug his heels into the mule’s ribs. “ ’Caze, colonel,” he laughed, " Susan knowed hit warn’t my mu’c.” Then, as he rode away merrily towards i,Susan’s, I pondered profoundly on what a queer little cuss Cupid is.—Bazar.